KYLE — Hays CISD hosted its 2025-26 budget workshop at the June 4 board of trustees meeting.
Prior to the workshop, superintendent Dr. Eric Wright began by noting that the governor signed House Bill 2 into effect, which provides a $55 increase to the basic funding allotment per student. Previously, the amount a school received for the year was $6,160/student for average daily attendance, but will now get $6,215. There are caveats to this number, though. For example, if a student is in a Career & Technical Educational program, the number may be slightly higher.
With the $55 dollar increase, the district will receive a $1,265,000 increase in state funding.
Additionally, in districts with 5,001 or more students, H.B. 2 provides a $2,500 annual pay increase for teachers with three to five years of experience and a $5,000 increase for those with five or more years of experience.
“Our understanding is that a teacher is classified as anyone that provides instruction for four or more hours a day and so, we’ll have to take a look and see who actually qualifies for that,” said Wright.
The district is also allotted $45 per regular program average daily attendance to provide salary increases for non-administrative staff, which amounts to $1,035,000, Wright said.
The rate of health insurance provided to staff members is also rising by $39.
Currently, there are 3,185 positions that are not state funded, but 1,420 have been compensated with the salary increases, which leaves 1,765 left to be divided by the additional $1,035,000. This comes out to $586/person, if left to the amount given by the legislature.
The other option considered was 1% increase across all staff members.
The following is a breakdown of how much the district would have to cut from other areas of the budget based on these potential raises:
• Fixed $586, with no insurance contribution increase: $0
• Fixed $586, with $39 insurance contribution increase: $1,263,600
• 1% increase, with no insurance contribution increase: $187,861
• 1% increase with $39 insurance contribution increase: $1,451,461
Both trustee Esperanza Orosco and Geoff Seibel were in favor of a type of tiered approach, rather than a flat 1% increase, with Human Resources director Christina Courson suggesting a 0.5% increase for certain professions, such as the business and academic professionals.
Courson also stated that the district could raise the threshold for classroom capacity to 23 students per teacher, versus 22 students per teacher, which would prevent the district from hiring additional teachers — totaling $75,000 — to accommodate one student.
“I struggle with increasing class sizes. I had this conversation when we first started talking about [this]. It took me a while to get on board with that. I totally love and appreciate that a teacher does not want to split a kid from a class. That’s incredibly hard on a student and it’s hard on the teacher. At the same time — to [trustee Vanessa] Petrea’s point — our classrooms aren’t all that big,” said trustee Courtney Runkle. “Sometimes, when we walk into classes, you’ve got kids sitting on top of each other … I don’t ever want to do anything that’s at the cost of a student's education.”
Orosco noted that she is also hesitant to increase classroom sizes, but emphasized that it is important to be realistic on where the district is at currently: “We have to look at the data and we have to see what it says.” She also stated that she is not set on the district providing the entirety of the $39 cost increase for employee health insurance and that maybe a cost share system can be put in place, so that the district only pays half.
Questioning whether other health insurance options were available was trustee Raul Vela, to which Courson shared that the district has been discussing whether the current plan is really serving the staff members: “We are interested in exploring options [and] potentially trying to engage other districts to see if we could go into some sort of co-op. We do know that if we withdraw from TRS Active Care, we must do so for five years. So, it’s a decision not to be made lightly and not without great planning … I don’t think we can afford not to consider it.”
Wright further stressed that the only way to get down the cost is to be in a co-op situation with another district, so hopefully this can be achieved.
“[The legislature] wanted to provide some relief for inflation and so, their plan was to do so through the allotment for basic costs. So, statewide it provided $1.3 billion for new allotment and it was to try to combat the high cost of insurance, the additional cost for TRS[Active Care] … and utilities, transportation,” said Wright. “This will provide $106 per enrolled student to each district and so … with that we should see $2,962,400.”
There is also a new safety allotment that will provide $20 per student and $33,540 per campus.
Courson noted that, in this year’s plan for staffing, the Curriculum & Instruction division, Human Resources and Finance “really worked collaboratively in approaching this,” which included analyzing each campus’s staffing sheets.
As of May 15, there were 165 vacancies in the general fund, 56 of which are department vacancies and amount to an estimated cost of $3 million. Campus staff makes up 109 vacancies for $6.9 million, according to the presentation.
The strategies for staff include: staffing pre-kindergarten and kindergarten conservatively based upon projects; staffing elementary specials conservatively; cutting two assistant principal vacancies at Camino Real and Uhland elementary schools, since each will have less than 900 students; not filling the vacated assistant principal position at Live Oak Academy; slightly increasing secondary ratios; and reviewing department vacancies.
These changes will amount to $3,120,000 in savings. Any future additions to staff will be based on student enrollment.
“We’re looking at [a] $13.7 million revenue shortfall for the current year. We’re looking at a district fund balance of $20 million, which is not where it needs to be. It needs to be much higher,” said Courson.
The district’s property insurance has also increased from $1.9 million to $2.6 million. Because of this, chief operations officer Max Cleaver noted that the district has entered into a benchmarking process to look at other companies.
Additionally, according to Alex Salazar, budget director, the operational budget has increased $2.8 million to $33 million total, campus budgets based on student enrollment will be increased by 1.5%, fixed cost budgets — items, such as utilities, county appraisal costs, legal fees, etc. — will increase by 13% and the central office/departmental budgets will increase 7.86%. The total revenue is estimated to sit at approximately $268 million, while payroll expenditures will be around $239 million.
Further discussion will continue at the June 10 meeting.
Trustee Byron Severance shared that the budget should come in front of the board to be voted on at the June 24 meeting, but that a special meeting could be called if it is not ready by then.
To listen to the presentation, visit bit.ly/4mJdui9.
